fandomtownies | Monday: Covent Garden Flowers

So it had definitely been a weekend, and Gladio was really looking forward to putting a lot of it behind him (he didn't expect that he would be able to, considering the lingering results of everything that had went down, but he could at least get ahead of it and deal with whatever managed to catch up with him when it did), and all he really wanted to do now was see Nell and spend time with her and he didn't want to wait until tomorrow to do it.

"Hey," he said, when he found her there among the roses and didn't hesitated a moment to interrupt whatever it was she was doing to swoop in with an arm around her waste and a kiss on her lips and an unabashed grin on his as he added, "You know I love you, right?"

Which was one helluva a way to greet a person there, Gladio, but go off.

Nell was certainly not expecting whirlwind Gladio, but the scoop and the kiss had her laughing with delight against his lips

Then the rest caught up with her.

"Wait. What?"

She must have heard him wrong. Not that she wouldn't have loved to hear those words from him, not that she wasn't coming to realize just how much in love with him she was, but she had never expected - no, she must have misheard.

And the grin grew a little wider, because that was definitely one of the responses he'd been gunning for with that one.

"I love you," he said again, catching her eyes and looking about ready to repeat it as many times as she'd need him to if necessary. "I figured you already knew, but some pretty wild shit went down this weekend, and I realized it would be pretty damn sad if I never got around to saying it. So...there it is. I love you, Nell. A lot. Tragedy averted."

"You figured - I -?" Nell had to take a moment with this. She held onto his arms as if they'd ground her enough to wrap her head around this. "You really - tragedy?"

Maybe more than a moment.

She took a deep breath, still holding onto his arms, eyes locked with his. "Can you'un say that one more time because I think I'm - something might be wrong with my hearing because I thought -" she broke off and tried again. "How can - you don't even know the bad dangerous things about me! And I mean I hoped maybe someday you might feel like me, but I - can you just - once more, please?"

Well, it wasn't quite a full swoon into his arms over the news, but pretty close, he'll take it! And Gladio did think about refuting some of her point there, or to ask her if she somehow thought he should, but he figured he could get to them after the main concept was better established. He really did mean it that he'd repeat it as many times as necessary.

So there it was again, nice and simple:

"I love you."

Nell just stared into his eyes for another moment, then flung her arms around him and buried her face in his neck. "I... oh Gladio!"

No one had ever said those words to her before. She knew John had loved her in his own way, as much as he'd been able at least, but not like this - and he'd certainly never said the words.

"Really and truly." It wasn't actually a question, more just a statement because she knew he wouldn't lie to her or say something like that as a joke.

He absolutely wouldn't, though he did kind of wish it hadn't, you know, taken his best friend's new girlfriend nearly dying on their living room floor to make him realize that, hey, he probably should say it, but...

When Nell threw her arms around him, Gladio wrapped both his around her and pulled her in, with a faint huff of a pleased laugh. "Yeah," he confirmed, and while he definitely didn't need any kind of reassurance for how he felt, the way her reaction and her embrace made such a nice, warm feeling spread across his chest was a pretty damn good solidification of it. "Definitely."

"I think you'un is maybe a little crazy," Nell said, "but I'm awful happy that you are. I'm trying really hard not to ask you why, 'cause really I'm not fishing, and I do - I guess you're always showing me how you feel, so I shouldn't be surprised, but my head's just all spinning now."

If you were expecting sense from her, Gladio, you might have to wait a bit.

On the contrary, all of that made perfect sense, Nell! And, of course Gladio knew it was going to go well, but he was really appreciating her contributions to that fact.

"We don't have enough time in the day for the why, anyway," he told her, plopping a kiss right on top of that spinning head of hers and giving her a squeeze. Definitely not letting her go until he was feeling a little more sure she could actually stand on her own, which he very confidently felt she wasn't quite there yet.

Oh she certainly wasn't going to be able to manage the standing up on her own thing just yet, so good work, Gladio. She was settling a little bit, even as her heart was leaping about and something inside her was just repeating, 'he loves me, he loves me' over and over.

"I don't know what to say," she admitted, "beyond saying that I'm so happy. Thank you?"

Had she told him she loved him back? Well she'd said the thing about hoping he felt that way she did, but no, not exactly. She'd get to it at some point.

And Gladio could have pointed that little detail out, but what was the fun in that? He didn't say it to hear it back. He just wanted to make sure she knew and that it did, in fact, get said, before some stupid thing that made it difficult or impossible might happen.

But what she did say made him laugh, and he nodded, pulling back a little to look at her better. "You're welcome. Any time."

"Might ought like it to be a lot," she said with a shy smile. "I find I like hearing it. Never actually thought I would from anyone, but since I'm feeling pretty much the same about you, it's especially nice to hear."

Nell was quiet for a moment, enjoying the feeling, but starting to worry a bit. "I just hope when you know everything about me that you don't change your mind."

"....Nell." Some of the mirth and the rush of the moment ebbed substatially at that, and Gladio didn't quite sigh, but it felt like it was right there on the edge of his response, and he looked at her for a moment as if trying to search out for any signs of anything that would sway him otherwise in the matter, and, coming up with nothing, just shook his head. "I don't think there's anything that could change my mind."

But it wasn't the first time she'd mentioned it, that there were things about her that he didn't know about that she worried about that would, somehow, alter his entire perception of her so drastically that he would just want to turn around and get as far from her as he could, and he frowned a little at her, though his hand lifted to gently brush some hair, real or imagined, back off her face, tucking it behind her ear, thus leaving his thumb to linger there against her cheek.

"But you could always just tell me," he pointed out. "And then we'll know for sure."

Another lesson from this weekend, perhaps, because he was pretty sure Liliana's whole ability to drain life from another person was a big surprise to all of them, so transparency did seem like a particularly good thing to have in a relationship, really.

Nell didn't want to ruin a moment she'd never thought she'd have - never even dreamed of having - but she'd rather that than have him find out later, when she gotten used to the idea of him loving her, and changing his mind then.

She carefully slipped out of his arms and pulled out a bottle of rum that she kept for the squirrels. Then she went over and locked the shop door before leading him into the back room. There she rubbed at her arms and took a moment to decide what to tell him - or rather how to tell him.

"I've killed people," she said finally. "Both of 'em were people who were trying to hurt me, so even though it means I'm prob'ly going to hell I can't make myself really regret it. But the way - Gladio... if someone - anyone - bleeds on the ground near me and I'm in that fight or flight mode- or if I'm communing with it and I'm agitated - it's like this bloodlust rises up in me. I can feed them to the land, just give them to the earth as it takes everything about them, clothes and all, and strips them right down to their smallest molecules till there's nothing left."

She clasped her hands together and kept her head down. "First time I didn't even know what I was doing, it just happened, but I knew the second time. And the day I decided to come back here -"

She shook her head. "It was almost a terrible terrible thing."

Right from the get-go, Gladio was tempted to interrupt with a protest, but he pulled back when it was pretty clear that there was a lot more to add, so he just settled back and listened carefully. And, see? His point about transparency was feeling pretty apt at the moment, since that bleeding thing in particular felt like a generally good thing to know.

When Nell clasped her hands together and ducked her head like that, he had to reach out and gently take them into his, especially as she continued on to describe something he could have only imagine being mildly terrifying at least, to have happened without her even knowing what was going on, and by the end, he was giving them a small, reassuring squeeze.

"Definitely gonna have to try harder," he said, "to dissuade me than self-defense against people who deserved it."

Well, he assumed, anyway, but considering what he knew about Nell's past, he didn't think it was much of a stretch at all.

"It's not so much I did it as that now... if there's blood on the land, I want to do it. Or the land wants me to do it and it's so hard to fight it and I'm always afraid..." Nell wanted to relax into his acceptance, but she had to finish. "Once I start it? I can't just stop halfway - at least I don't think I can add I can't exactly experiment and just before I left I almost killed a bunch of kids - I had their blood and I held their lives and when I saw they were just children - I almost couldn't let them go."

And yes, they'd been coming to either kill her or drag her back to the church, but that wasn't the point.

As Nell explained, Gladio couldn't help but think about what might have happened the other night if he hadn't been there to pull Stark away from Liliana. Or even what might have happened if Stark hadn't shown up at all. So he was quiet, for a moment, which meant that when his finally said something, they seemed a little hoarse.

"Almost, though," he said, and it might have been a flimsy branch to hang from, but...

"And that's--it'd be one thing, right, if you could do something like that and you wanted to, but it sounds like...the thing with a power like that is all on how you use it..."

His brow knitted, a frown growing deeper on his face as he shook his head a little. "You'd never do something like that," he said, willing himself to say it with confidence and assurance, "unless you had no choice. Sometimes...we don't..."

Which, okay, yeah, was maybe putting a little bit of the other night into some perspective, too.

"I didn't hurt them," she said quietly. "I let them go even though I felt the land come roaring up. I would rather have died than kill children. And I would have if someone else hadn't shown up just then."

Nell shivered. "I don't ever want to use it, not ever again. But when we were - when I was deep in the land looking for you and so scared - I was afraid that if someone cut themselves or something..."

She made a face. "See? It's partly why I wanted to learn to fight. I can stop someone without having my defense automatically kill someone."

His voice was hoarse and he was frowning and her heart just sank. But it was good to know now.

Would it be any consolation that, the more Nell spoke, the more that frown and the furrow in Gladio's brow softened?

And if that didn't do it, then how about the fact that when she finished, he was stepping in to put his arms around her and pull her into a tight but gentle embrace, lowering his head toward the top of hers.

"Oh, Nell," he said, and he left out a huff of a breath, more mystified than anything else, with maybe a small touch of just bewildered amusement. "The fact that you think any of that would make me love you any less, when all it does is just make me love you even more..."

And it would always, endlessly, drive him to a point of frustration that she just couldn't ever seem to see that. Not frustration at her, but at everything she'd been through, that had just warped her perception so much...and at himself, too, for maybe not being better at knowing how to explain it to her, or to just show her how incredible he really thought she was, even more so now than ever before.

"Really?" she said looking up at him with eyes full of hope. She held onto him tightly, head once again buried into his neck and shoulder. "Don't know what I ever did to deserve someone like you, but I'm ever so grateful. I think I've been falling in love with you for such a long time, but part of me always worries."

Nell pulled back just enough to be able to look him in the eyes. "I trust you and if it doesn't scare you and you're sure and you love me then I don't plan on ever letting you go. Just so you know."

Edited 2023-10-09 20:04 (UTC)

"I'm sure," Gladio assured Nell as he looked back down at her and smiled, maybe a little crookedly, but warmly, gratefully. "And I love you, and it's going to take a whole lot more than that to scare me off."

He'd fought daemons and faced gods, he'd survived the Tempering Grounds, and helped bring a whole planet back from the brink of destruction. He was pretty sure he could handle a little bit of earth-related bloodlust that she didn't even like being a thing and avoided at almost all costs.

But, just to give it that little extra oomph of proof, if she needed it, he was going to go ahead and kiss her, feeling it was pretty long overdue anyway.

Nell kissed him back with a joyous abandon. This was something she'd never dreamed of and all she ever could have wanted.

Monday: Covent Garden Flowers

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